How Hop Growers Are Adjusting to a Changing Climate
A key ingredient in beer, hops grown in drought and extreme heat see lower yields and less characteristic bitter flavor. A new paper predicts further drops among hop plants grown in Europe over the...
View ArticleOn the Colorado River, Staving Off a Bass Invasion
Until last summer, it appeared that Glen Canyon Dam was keeping the invasive smallmouth bass out of the Grand Canyon. But two decades of drought and warmer waters helped convey the fish downstream,...
View ArticleFrom a Grassroots Survey to Long Covid Treatment Trials
Despite an influx of research funding, there are no widely accepted, FDA-approved treatments to ease long Covid. In that void, desperate patients have turned to a range of proposed — and unproven —...
View ArticleIn Hong Kong’s Shoebox Flats, an Opportunity for Targeted Care
Subdivided apartments have sprung up across the city in response to a widespread housing shortage. But these informal dwellings tend to be poorly ventilated and lacking basic facilities, affecting...
View ArticleAre We Having a Moral Panic Over Misinformation?
Government agencies have been pouring resources into combatting the spread of online misinformation. But the concept is ill-defined, and there hasn’t been much evidence that exposure to falsehoods and...
View ArticleFrom a Fledgling Genetic Science, A Murky Market for Prediction
The products have largely escaped regulatory scrutiny, despite doubts about their health benefits and potential risks. The commercial push has also created tension between academic researchers who toil...
View ArticleInterview: NASA’s New Push to Track Unexplained Objects
Astrophysicist David Spergel recently led a NASA-appointed team of independent experts that created a “roadmap” for collecting data on UAPs — unidentified anomalous phenomena — and to reduce the stigma...
View ArticleHow Kelp Keeps a Record of Environmental Calamity
By looking for bull kelp populations with genetic signatures that don’t match their neighbors’, scientists can identify places where kelp was killed and replaced. Tracking such changes offers a new way...
View ArticleAmid Regulatory Gaps, Telehealth Prescribers Flourish
Telehealth can offer patients access to faster, cheaper, more specialized medical care. But the boom in online health care has also made it easier than ever for Americans to get prescription drugs...
View ArticleWhy Fossil Fuel Companies Can’t Leave Resources Stranded
The Paris Agreement sets a global temperature rise limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the most severe climate impacts. But that would require fossil fuel companies to strand vast amounts of oil,...
View ArticleBook Excerpt: How America’s Forest Fire Revolution Lost Its Spark
Starting in the 1960s, advocates of a “fire counterculture” began arguing that the reintroduction of wildfire was needed to protect the nation’s wilderness areas. But over time, large-scale prescribed...
View ArticleIn India, a Need for New Antidotes to Curb Deadly Snakebites
Around 58,000 Indians die from snakebites every year, the highest rate in the world. And a growing proportion of these bites come from less common species of venomous snakes in specific pockets of the...
View ArticleMedicaid ‘Unwinding’ Breeds Chaos in States
After pandemic-era federal protections ended this spring, Medicaid coverage for 10 million people across the country has been terminated. Millions more are expected to lose coverage in the coming...
View ArticleMeditation Is Big Business. The Science Isn’t So Clear.
For years, mindfulness has been promoted by some as a near panacea. Yet the field of meditation research has also faced criticism from some psychologists and researchers who say the health benefits are...
View ArticleTo Boost Gender Equity in the Sciences, Follow the Evidence
Many institutions undertake efforts to make hiring and tenure decisions for science positions more equitable for women. But the effectiveness of strategies such as gender-blind review and stopping the...
View ArticleBook Review: Are We Ready to Head to Mars? Not So Fast.
“A City on Mars” is Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s cheeky, informative account of the daunting challenges to establishing human settlements on the red planet, which is a far more complicated affair than...
View ArticleThe Challenge of Providing Treatment for Children With Anorexia
Some 150 years after it was first described in the medical literature, anorexia remains difficult to cure. For youth, the first-line treatment asks parents to assume total control over their child’s...
View ArticleTexas Implements a New Ban on Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates
The latest legislation applies to all private businesses, including hospitals, which can jeopardize the health of those with compromised immune systems or other underlying conditions. Some are worried...
View ArticleFossils Are Shaped by People. Does That Matter?
People who prepare fossils are often overlooked in the scientific literature. That oversight, some experts argue, has consequences, by not only burying the work of the people on which the field...
View ArticleHow To Bring Fair Play to the Science Nobels
Over their 123-year history, the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine have overlooked worthy women scientists. To make strides toward correcting this gender disparity,...
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